Dear Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Council Members,
I wanted to take a moment to share with you the current public
sentiment surrounding the possibility an underground sewage storage tank will
be placed below Fiesta Meadows Park.
First and foremost, I thank the people who spoke at the October Public
Works meeting.
To summarize my beliefs and findings from that night, I do not
have objections with an in system storage approach to fixing the City’s Sanitary
Sewage Overflow (SSO) problem. In terms of accepting the findings of the staff,
I agree it will provide a beneficial function with relative ease once installed.
However, I have extreme reservations about accepting any proposal for this
strategy if it means interrupting one of our city parks for an extended period
of time, especially one so close to an elementary school.
Parks mean quality of life, and that is something San Mateo has
come to represent. Quality elementary schools, another hallmark of San Mateo,
function best without close proximity to major construction projects even if
the duration is limited. Let us uphold what we stand for and find another
place.
Public Comment
This is not just my opinion. Over and over at the meeting I
heard the same testament – this park is the heart and soul of our community, a
place to play, grow up and meet the neighbors, the only place they can go
without driving through the painfully long slog of cars and buses already
isolating Fiesta Gardens from the rest of the city. The locals love it dearly
and many go there almost every day.
While four years may mean little in terms of a grand infrastructure
project, to the citizens of Fiesta Gardens and the students of adjacent
elementary school it means a tremendous amount of irreplaceable time with their
families. Further, several hundred more children and adults rely on Fiesta
Meadows Park for organized sports including AYSO and Abbott Middle School. These
children deserve the opportunity to grow up playing sports locally.
Questions and concerns mentioned include:
·
In a time when we are regularly disconnected
from our physical environment how can you take away a badly needed athletic
field for so long?
·
How are you measuring
the impact of the diesel exhaust and particulate matter from all those trucks
[one every 5-10 minutes during peak construction] on Fiesta Garden elementary
school students?
·
Where will local
children go to play when they are virtually trapped in their neighborhood
during peak traffic hours?
·
Have you considered
the idiopathic risk the project presents to Fiesta Garden residents?
·
How can you account
for the daycares in the area which will lose a valuable resource for so long,
perhaps destroying their businesses?
·
Why select a construction
site in an area already struggling with horrendous traffic?
·
Who will compensate
the Fiesta Gardens HOA for the effective loss of their recreational resources,
an adjacent playground and pool, throughout the project’s implementation?
Finally, I want to highlight the contribution of the children
who sat through the drudgery of a commission meeting and overcame their shyness
to speak on behalf of the park they love, as well as the mother who bore the
cost of a babysitter in order to defend the park she and her children use
nearly every day.
However
There was only one point made during public comment to which I
feel a rebuttal is in order.
One speaker characterized this problem as being us (longtime San
Mateo homeowners) versus them (people moving into new developments such as Bay
Meadows and the future Station Park Green), blaming new development for the SSO
problem. This, I believe, is incorrect.
Let’s do the math:
Based on what we learned from the staff presentation, the
current sewage system maxes out at 60 million gallon a day (MGD). According to
the figures shown and taking population growth into account, the projected
demand on the system on heavy flow day will be 98MGD in 2035. 16MGD of this
will be baseline use on a dry weather day (up from 14MGD in 2014). The excess water inundating the
system on wet water day represents the remainder, or 82 MGD. At our meeting the
staff offered that most projections for the state of California indicate half
of this can be directly tied to the failure of lateral (secondary) lines. Under
this assumption, after an aggressive process of fixing laterals (which would
not address the other needs of our aging sewage plant), our full capacity demand
would be 57MGD, or 3MGD below the limit of our current system. New developments
have the latest technology, as opposed to the major problem, old and broken
terra cotta piping dating back to the 1950s or before. For this reason,
residents in brand new buildings will not be expected to make more than perhaps
minor contributions to the problem of SSO in San Mateo. One negligent homeowner
in an established neighborhood can do far more damage in terms of water
infiltration than people residing in newly built multi-family housing.
Financial Considerations
Beyond quality of life issues, there is still the matter of
money. This project will have an extended negative impact on Fiesta Garden home
values. People want to buy homes in San Mateo not only because they believe it
will give them access to our outstanding parks but also because they trust
their investment will hold value. On both account you would be betraying the
citizens of Fiesta Garden to approve a storage tank under their community park.
Conclusion
There has to be a better place than an already established park next to an elementary school for an in system storage tank. The entry of the Corporation Yards on the list
of possible locations is an exciting development. Hopefully this site, or one
of the other less residential areas under consideration, will prove feasible for
the tank our city needs.
Thank you,
Kara Cox
Vice Chair, Public Works Commission (for identification purposes only)
